Family who lost loved ones in MH370 had relatives on board MH17

A family who lost two loved ones in doomed flight MH370 are thought to have had two relatives on board the Malaysia Airlines plane shot down over Ukraine.

Irene and George Burrows, from Biloela, Queensland, have been mourning son Rodney and his wife Mary since the Malaysia Airlines flight they were on from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared in March.

It is understood the Australian couple's step-granddaughter Maree and her husband Albert, from Sunbury, near Melbourne, were on MH17, which crashed in eastern Ukraine after leaving Amsterdam for the Malaysian capital yesterday.

All 283 passengers and 15 crew members, including 28 Australians, are thought to have died in Thursday's crash, the circumstances of which are not clear.

Mrs Burrows's son Greg told the Courier Mail: "It has been a very trying day.

"This has just blown everyone clean out of the water."

The eventual fate of MH370 is still not known, but investigators concluded it crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people on board.

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